


at your own expense

by playingforkeeps



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: (gotta love families), Alternate Universe - Nursey doesn't play hockey, Dancing, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Florist!Nursey, Genderfluid Derek "Nursey" Nurse, Getting Together, Honest Depictions of New England, M/M, Meet-Cute, Mutual Pining, Recreational Drug Use, Sex As An Unhealthy Coping Mechanism (referenced), Trans William "Dex" Poindexter, Transphobia (later on and it's minor), Weddings, everyone is queer and nothing hurts, listen i swear this is so much happier than it sounds
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-31
Updated: 2018-06-04
Packaged: 2019-05-16 10:16:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 12,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14809401
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/playingforkeeps/pseuds/playingforkeeps
Summary: “My d-man just came out to his family, but some of his soon-to-be in-laws having some trouble processing because they’re disgusting upper-class fucks. As such, he may or may not require the services of someone willing to be his one-time date, so obviously, I thought of the most beautiful man I know.”“Aw, Shits—” Derek begins.“But since Jack Zimmerman is both an NHL player and in a relationship, I decided you’d do.”





	1. The Lie

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Mikozumes (Acai)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Acai/gifts).



In the photo, Derek’s suit jacket is fluttering in the breeze as he presses his face into the neck of the other person there. They’re both caught in the sunset and haloed in gold, and with the angle and the gentle glimmer, it’s almost impossible to see how badly Derek is panicking.

But that’s not where it starts. The whole long chain of terrible decisions starts much earlier, in a flower shop on the corner of Main and Greenhaven, at 3:18 on a Thursday.

Derek knows it’s 3:18 because he’s looking at the clock and wondering if the hands are stuck. There’s no way time is supposed to go this slowly, not when it said 3:15 the last time he looked at it, and that feels like it was eight hours ago. He’s about to text Lardo and see if he can close up early when the door bangs open so hard it nearly knocks over an entire display of lemon verbena.

“Hi—” He starts to say, but the guy, a redhead with an angry flush to match, doesn’t pay him any mind. Instead, he starts pacing around the shop, mumbling under his breath and scrubbing at his eyes. Derek isn’t entirely sure if he should be terrified or laughing.

Redhead stalks from one fridge to another and cards his hands through his hair until it’s sticking in six different directions. After circling the shop three full times, he ends up back at the counter. Derek slaps on a customer smile, but before he can say anything, Redhead blurts, “I have a specific request.”

“Okay,” says Derek. He’s a little wary of special requests since the erotic shrubbery fiasco of 2015, so he presses on. “How specific, exactly?”

Rifling through his pockets, Redhead pulls out a few bills out of a cracked wallet and counts them out. “I have twenty…forty…fifty-three bucks here, and I need to know how you say ‘fuck you, you actual toe wart, and your whole goddamn nepotistic asshole family too’ with a bouquet.”

Derek blinks. He wants to ask if the guy’s okay, but what he actually says is, “How soon do you need it?”

Redhead raises an eyebrow. “Can you do it for Saturday?”

He glances at the clock. 3:20. Forty minutes left on shift before Lardo takes over, and the store is dead. “I got nothing else to do.”

Redhead smiles with relief and sticks out his hand. “Thanks, man. You’re really doing me a solid here.” Derek shakes it. His fingers are long and pale, thick with spiderweb tendons. “I’m Will.”

“Derek,” Derek replies, gesturing at his nametag, the only uniform standard Lardo insists on. “This should take me about a half hour, you wanna stick around?”

“I got nothing else to do,” Will parrots. He pulls a laptop out of his backpack and gestures at a stool in the corner. “Mind if I work? I’ve got a data project due in a couple days.”

Derek turns away, throwing a “Go for it” over his shoulder as he stops to check one of the fridges. For about twenty minutes, all he hears are keystrokes on the laptop until Will lets out a heavy sigh and unzips his bag. When he turns back, Will is slumped on the stool, looking frustrated. “Hey, man, you good?”

“I just—” He falters and messes with his hair again. “I’ve got a lot on my mind. Can you just fucking, like, talk to me for a minute so I calm down?”

Pulling the last of the stems he needs from the fridge, he turns back to the counter. “I can do you one better than that. I’ve got some chai in the back, you want some?”

Will smiles again. He has a dimple on one cheek, giving his face a lopsided kind of charm. “Actually, that would be sick.”

Derek hits a button on the old stereo system as he goes into the break room, and Stevie Nicks croons through the speakers. When he comes out, a steaming cup of tea in one hand, Will asks, “Fleetwood Mac?”

“Yeah, I know, I’m a seventh-grader that just discovered Wicca.” He rolls his eyes. “I’ve heard it all.”

“No, I love this album! My dad used to play it when I was a kid.” Will takes the tea gratefully. “Actually, I used to think this song was called ‘Rihanna” instead of ‘Rhiannon’.”

He sips his own hour-old tea, which has gone cold on the counter, and turns his attention to the flowers. “I got into them in middle school—you know how every indie kid loves ‘Landslide’. Always wished I had some musical talent. Do you play?”

“Guitar, bass, a little piano.” Will ticks them off on his fingers. “I had the same thing with Steven Tyler. Grew my hair out and everything.” Derek eyes him incredulously. “Yeah, it was exactly as bad as you think. I burned all the photos.”

“If it makes you feel any better, I had a Bowie phase where I wore glitter on my face to school.” He laughs ruefully. “It was kinda crossed with my Kesha phase.”

“Was Kesha really a phase, though? I feel like she’s kinda forever.”

“Yeah, you’ve got me. My love for her will never die.”

For the first time, Derek really studies Will’s face. He can’t figure out quite how he looks familiar, and then it hits him. “You don’t go to Samwell, do you?”

It obviously catches Will off guard. “Uh, yeah, I do. Why do you ask?”

Derek shakes his head, a little embarrassed. “Oh, I’m in the English program, but one of my high school friends plays on the hockey team. I might’ve seen you at a party. Do you know Shitty Knight?”

Will’s eyebrows shoot up. “Know him? Yeah, he plays on my line.” He looks intently at Derek for a second before something registers. “You’re… Nurse? He’s mentioned you.” His eyes widen in surprise. “Wait, oh my god. You must know his girlfriend, right? Lard—uh, Larissa?

“Dude, Lardo’s my boss.” Derek laughs in surprise. “We met at an art thing a while ago, and I started working here last spring. Her aunt owns the place.” He shakes his head, incredulous. “This is so weird. We’re like, on the edge of each others’ bubbles.”

“No, wait.” Will snaps his fingers. “I know exactly where I know you from. I saw you—”

And then he catches himself, like he’s not sure he can say it. Derek grins. “Where? If it was ‘dancing on a table’, you’re gonna have to specify.”

A breath. Will looks both ways, like he’s checking the store is still empty. “I saw you at Pride last year, I think. At the block party with Shitty.”

And now Derek understands the hesitation. The last time Will had seen him, he’d been mostly naked, wearing a trans flag like a cape, and probably belting “Everytime We Touch”, and it’s not the mention of Cascada that’s making Will nervous. He smiles again, this one coaxing. “That was a pretty good day. Explains why I don’t remember you, though, I was pretty schwasted after about noon.”

Will nods in either agreement or understanding as his entire body relaxes another degree. “It was a good one, wasn’t it?”

“ _Fuck_ yeah it was.” Normally, he’s not supposed to swear in front of customers, but they’re already past the queer threshold, so he figures they’re good on that. “I’m pretty sure I spent all my money on tips at the drag show.”

“I think—” Will laughs, almost nervously, and his eyes flicker to the corners of the room again. “I woke up the next morning with my binder in a tree and glitter just fuckin’… everywhere, dude.”

Derek holds up his fist. Will bumps it gratefully. “So, a completely successful Pride.”

“I guess so.” The smile finally reaches Will’s eyes. “Oh,” he blurts, and holds a hand to his chest. “He/him/his.”

“Same. Or they/them, but mostly he.”

“Good to know.” For the first time, Will looks like a person instead of a caged animal, and Derek realizes again that he’s actually really cute. He gestures to the preliminary sketch Derek has worked up between them. “So, changing the subject, how do you know what flowers to use for this?”

Derek shrugs. “I grew up gardening with my moms, so it kinda stayed with me. And, you know, I’m an English major, so the whole flower-symbolism thing—” He stops as Will scoffs. “What?”

“Sorry, sorry, knee-jerk reaction. I’m a CS major. All we do is shit on English majors.”

“Oh, look at me, I’m Will and I’m gonna have marketable skills after college. I guess I won’t tell you what all the cool flower language means.”

“Hey, sorry, man,” says Will, holding his hands up apologetically. Again, Derek notices his hands, the fine bones of his wrists. “We all know we’re never gonna be employed till the old people retire anyway.”

Derek quirks an eyebrow. “So, does that mean you want to hear the meanings?”

“Well, that’s kind of the point of ordering it.”

Turning the drawing to show him, Derek points to each flower in turn. “So we’re basing this around orange lilies, for hatred, paired with tiger lilies for pride. Very classic. Set that off with a few narcissus—egotism, obviously—and I’d throw in some geraniums, which tend to represent stupidity, but they wouldn’t quite go, so I’m gonna fill it out with privet instead of our usual greens. You know those privacy hedges that rich people put up? It literally means “stay away”, so what we’re saying here translates essentially into “you’re selfish, stay away from me, I hate you.”” He pauses. The bouquet isn’t quite complete. “Is there anything else you can tell me about the recipient?”

Of course, he doesn’t actually need to know that, but Will is, frankly, distractingly attractive, and this is an easy way to get him to open up. He isn’t quite expecting the way Will bites his lip, the little bit of hurt in his eyes. “It’s my cousin’s wedding,” he admits. “And I love her, I do, but the guy she’s marrying is a dick. I’m, uh,”—flapping a hand dismissively—”recently out to my extended family, and he didn’t really want me to attend. Didn’t even send me an invitation until I asked why not, and when he did, his excuse was that he thought I’d have trouble finding a plus-one.”

Derek’s eyes are wide when he finishes. “Ah,” he says, for lack of a better word. “That’s kinda fucked up.”

Will shrugs it off, but Derek can still see how hurt he is. Instead of pushing it, he announces, “I know what the arrangement needs.” He picks up his pencil again and scribbles in three peonies, nestling them carefully among the lilies. “Peonies. Shame.”

By the time he has the arrangement punched into the computer, Will seems to have relaxed entirely. He’s almost beaming as he pulls out his wallet again to pay, but Derek shoos it away before he can. “Don’t bother. This one’s on the house. Come back at like five on Saturday, we’ll have it ready.”

“I can’t do that.” Will shakes his head. “It’s a personal thing. I’ve gotta pay you somehow.”

There’s a dirty joke to be made in that, and Derek pointedly ignores it. “Look,” he says, resting his elbows on the counter. “You’ve already gotta deal with your shitty in-laws. Least I can do is give you a nice passive-aggressive screw-you to do it with. Is there anything else I can do for you?’

From the way Will grimaces as he sips his chai, Derek can tell there is. Finally, he asks, “You know where a guy can get a date in twenty-four hours? I don’t exactly have the funds for an escort service.”

Derek frowns. “Don’t people in the wedding party usually get paired up?”

“I’m not in the wedding party, though. I’m just a guest. And…” He rubs the back of his neck awkwardly. “I kinda told my cousin I had a boyfriend because of what her fiance said. The wedding’s in three days, and if I don’t find a date by the ceremony, I’m screwed.”

The smallest semblance of an idea starts to bloom in Derek’s mind. It’s a terrible idea, especially considering he’s checked out Will’s ass at least three times since he set foot in the store, but it’s an idea all the same. “You know,” he begins.

Will glances up at him. “Yeah?”

The idea dances on the precipice of his lips, leans dangerously out into the open. Derek yanks it back. “I’m sure one of the guys on the team would offer to be your fake date if you asked,” he finishes. He’s pretty sure he’s imagining the twist of disappointment on Will’s lips.

It’s gone in an instant. Will smiles—and god, it’s a great smile—and pushes his hair back again, shoving a few dollars in the tip jar. “That’s actually a really good idea. I’ll check with Shitty. He’d love the chance.”

“Good call.”

“I’ll see you round, yeah?” Another flash of that smile. Derek curses himself for being such a coward.

“Yeah, definitely.”

The bell rings once as Will leaves, and again a second later as Lardo walks in. “Hey, kiddo,” she calls.

Derek ducks a little so she can ruffle his hair as she passes. “Hey, boss.”

Lardo dumps her bag unceremoniously behind the counter and grabs her apron from its hook. “Yo, was that Poindexter I saw walking out of here? I didn’t know you guys knew each other.”

For half a second, Derek freezes in the middle of taking off his nametag. He has to bite back what he was actually about to say, which is _Lardo, I am so fucking gay_ , or maybe _I’ll give you all my tips for a week to introduce me_.

“Not really. We only just met.”

 

Later that night, Derek is hunched over his desk and stress-shredding a page of his notebook when _Mambo No. 5_ blares across his room. He picks up the phone. “Hey, Shits.”

“Nursey,” says Shitty. “Nursey, Nursey, Nurse, you beautiful motherfucker.”

“How many have you had?”

Shitty grumbles, insulted. “I’ll have you know that I am stone-fucking-cold sober right now. Is that really so surprising?”

Derek stands up and paces across the room. He can never seem to stand still when he’s on the phone, so he counts twelve steps, stops, and turns around. “A little bit. What’s up?”

“Do you remember that time in high school where I swapped lab partners with you in bio so you could be with Alice McCaffrey, and you guys hooked up?”

He does. Alice had been a year ahead of him, a tiny stage manager with a chip on her shoulder and a prosthetic leg she painted herself, and he’d spent the first year and a half of high school with a hopeless crush on her. They’d messed around a few more times until Alice realized she was more into girls and called it off. “Yeah?”

“And you said to me, ‘Shitty Knight, to thee I pledge my undying—’”

“I definitely did _not_ say that.”

“Yeah, okay. And you said, ‘Shits, I owe you one’?”

He remembers this too, only vaguely. “...yeah?”

“Well.” In the background, he hears the unmistakable pop-hiss of a beer opening. Derek can still picture Shitty lounging across one of the Andover common room couches, IPA in one hand and pipe in the other with the phone balanced under his chin. “The time has come, my stunningly handsome friend, to cash in that favor.”

“I’m not having a threesome with you.”

A long pause and a glug as Shitty takes a sip. “Derek. Don’t be ridiculous. Obviously, our charming father-son dynamic is too good to compromise, and anyway, if you fall in love with me, it’ll be due to my charm. No, this is something else entirely.” Another pause. “My d-man just came out to his family, but some of his soon-to-be in-laws having some trouble processing because they’re disgusting upper-class fucks. As such, he may or may not require the services of someone willing to be his one-time date, so obviously, I thought of the most beautiful man I know.”

“Aw, Shits—” Derek begins.

“But since Jack Zimmerman is both an NHL player and in a relationship, I decided you’d do.”

Derek shakes his head to clear it, feeling not unlike an Etch-a-Sketch. “Wait, Jack Zimmerman’s dating someone?”

Shitty hesitates for half a second, just long enough that Derek knows he isn’t supposed to know that, but that he isn’t going to get any more about it. “Beside the point. The _point_ , my dearest darling Derek, is that I’m offering you a chance to eat delicious bite-sized wedding hors d’oeuvres and piss off shitty white people, which I think we both know are your two great passions in life.”

Suddenly, the last piece snaps into place, and Derek realizes what he means. “You’re not talking about—”

“That’s the best part.” God, Derek can hear the shit-eating grin in his voice. “You’ve actually met this guy, Der-bear. Redhead, 6’2”, looks like a physical manifestation of your type?”

“Shitty, you’re insane.”

“Well, unless he came back to the house today talking about some other insanely hot florist who knows me and Lardo.”

Derek stops dead. “Insanely what?”

“Christ on toast, Derek. Here was me, thinking our boy Will didn’t have a romantic bone in his body. But then he shows up at the Haus all starry-eyed, going ‘god, Shitty, I’ve met a real life Oscar Wilde with hair like a goddamn Calvin Klein model.”

“He did not say that.”

“Well, he actually said ‘you didn’t tell me your friend was hot’, and I went ‘which friend’, and he went, ‘Andover friend, Nurse’, so I was like ‘oh, do you want his number’, and then he screamed into a pillow. Same deal.”

“Shitty,” Derek says with as much control as he can, “you son of a bitch.”

“I resent that gendered language, Nurse. My mother is a goddamn saint. Will you do it?”

Derek looks at the clock. It’s way too late to be arguing with Shitty. This’ll just keep going for hours. And, well. Will’s hot. He’s only human.“I hate you. I really, really do.”

“So you’ll do it?”

He sighs. It won’t go that badly. “Yeah, I’ll do it.”

“Fantastic. I’ll give Will your number. Trust me, this’ll be great.” Nursey is really going to kill him one of these days. “Oh, and Nursey?”

“Yeah?”

“Bring your pink suit.”

 

“You realize, of course, that this is a terrible idea,” Lardo says. Her little elephant-shaped pipe is almost empty as she takes another hit, and she curses when it refuses to light. “Pass me the grinder?”

Derek lobs it across the bed, nearly spilling greens everywhere. His entire body feels very sideways right now. He says as much to Lardo, and his voice sounds far away.

Lardo huffs a few strands of hair off her face. Derek watches them fly through the air, catching ten shades of black in the afternoon light. She grins at him over her lighter. “Dude, you’re fucking gone.”

“Lemon skunk, dude,” Derek agrees happily. “Best strain on earth.” Lardo’s words register with him, and he sits up quickly, the world feeling a touch too yellow for his taste. “Wait, why’s it going to be a bad idea?”

“Because you’re going to fall in love with him.”

He shakes his head slowly. “I am…I’m not going to do that. He’s pretty, but I’m just doing him a favor. A favor for a very pretty friend.” He takes another hit when Lardo offers him the pipe. This week’s blend is cut with blue lotus, and it goes down so ridiculously smooth, like silk scarves running down his throat. “And I get an open bar out of it, so, like, who’s losing?”

A smoke ring drifts above his head like a butterfly. He considers catching it, but it dissolves in a sunbeam, and it’s so beautiful that he’d write a poem about if he could move his arms. Lardo says something that he registers but doesn’t understand. “What?”

From a long way past his ears, he hears Lardo say, “You’re losing, dumbass. This is a goddamn indie romcom in the making. I mean, ‘he stormed into my shop and asked for a very specific bouquet, then by coincidence I ended up his wedding date’? This is, like, Anna Kendrick opposite Zac Efron. And because you’re you, you’re gonna eat that shit up.”

Derek takes another handful of Doritos, eating them as slowly as he can. “Lardo, you’re probably making a really good point about white people and romcoms, but I’m just…really experiencing these chips right now.”

She glances at the bag. “Derek, those are Cheetos.”

He looks at his hand, which is indeed full of Cheetos. “Chester the Cheetah is okay with people calling him daddy on Twitter. Are we gonna have to kinkshame a cultural icon?”

Before she can answer, his phone buzzes on the bed. Derek starts to lunge for it, but he’s moving through syrup and Lardo gets there first. “It’s him.”

They’ve been texting nonstop since Shitty gave Will his number, but Will’s been in lab and hasn’t answered for a few hours. It’s a little hard to hide his delight. “Lemme read it.” She hands him the phone, rolling her eyes. Derek reads the sentence as individual words, then as a whole: _wait, you haven’t read hitchhiker’s guide?_

 _nah bro_ , he texts back.

The response comes almost instantly. _dude, it’s the best. a CLASSIC. you want to borrow my copy?_

Derek grins goofily at Lardo. “He’s lending me a book.” He lies back down, sprawled on the bed like a Greek statue, or maybe an octopus. “He’s lending me a book, Lardo.”

Lardo collapses next to him with a sigh that seems to hang in the air between them. “Just don’t say I didn’t warn you, okay?”

“I won’t.”

“And you really think you won’t end up liking him?”

“I promise.”

“You’re lying,” she murmurs, pushing a little of his hair back with a paint-spattered hand.

 _I know_ , he thinks, but he’ll never tell her that.

 

The doorbell pierces Derek’s ears as he stumbles to the door, trying to figure out who would turn up to his door at the crack of fucking _dawn_ on a Saturday. When he yanks open the door, he finds Will trying to balance two travel mugs in one hand as he rubs his eyes with the other.

“You packed?” asks Will, because apparently greetings aren’t a part of Maine culture.

“It is the crack of fucking _dawn_ ,” Derek replies flatly.

“It’s eight a.m., calm down.” Will hands him the cup and walks into his dorm uninvited, staring around at the mess. “Jesus, dude, read much?”

Derek, who’s still struggling to even keep his eyes open, glances around at the overstuffed bookshelf, the piles on the desk, the three novels splayed open on his bed. “English major, remember?”

He drains a quarter of the travel mug in one go, and at the exact same moment that Will turns around, saying, “Oh, I didn’t know how you take your—”, Derek realizes that the coffee is black, scalding, and has the approximate viscosity of motor oil. He chokes on the taste, nearly spluttering all over his copy of _American Gods_.

“Jesus _fuck_!”

He stumbles around the room, jumping up and down and shaking his head to clear the bitterness out of his mouth. When he’s done, Will has one hand over his mouth, stifling laughter. “I was gonna say,” he grins, “that I have creamer and sugar if you want it.” Biting his lip, he digs in his pocket and pulls out a handful of them. Derek nods gratefully, puts his coffee down precariously on a nearby stack of textbooks, and dumps four creamers and six sugars into the cup before taking another careful sip. Will looks incredulous. “You, uh, want some coffee with that?”

“Some of us actually like having taste buds. Jesus fucking H, Will, what is that?”

“That’s what’s going to get us to Maine in the next five hours, not including traffic. C’mon, grab your bag. You can sleep before your shift.”

Derek blinks. “My what?”

A little crease appears between Will’s eyebrows. “Driving shift. To Maine. Where we’re going.”

Derek blinks again. “Will, I’m gay. I can’t drive.”

“Hey.” Will points a halfway-accusatory finger at him, but his tone is laughing. “I resent that stereotype. Everyone knows city gays can’t drive, but us country gays gotta learn. It’s the only way to meet other country gays. This your bag?”

He gestures to Derek’s suitcase. Derek stares at it for a second. “Oh, yeah.” He’d almost forgotten it was there.

Will grabs the bag and hefts it over his shoulder. “Alright, get dressed, city gay. You can sleep in the car.”

 

As it turns out, Derek doesn’t sleep in the car, as much as he’d like to. The entire drive up, he’s learning things about Will, and somehow, it’s interesting enough that he forgets he’s running on caffeine and gummy bears. He learns, for instance, that Will’s at Samwell on a combination merit and athletic scholarship, that he’s been playing hockey since he was eight, that he’s majoring in computer science but maybe minoring in theater tech for fun. That he and his siblings (two sisters, who he adores) have competitions to see who can come up with the most creative insults to other drivers. That he’s been out to his family for six months now, and in grand Catholic tradition, his parents listened, nodded, and then never talked about it again.

He learns Will’s got a great laugh, one that starts which a grin and a wheeze and then bubbles up out of his throat like he’s surprised by it.

And Will listens too, really listens when Derek talks. He laughs at all the right times when Derek tells stories about his and Shitty’s misadventures at Andover and Lardo’s erotic shrubbery fiasco, jumps in with new ideas when Derek talks about the thesis he wants to do on recontextualizing Othello for the modern age. It’s easy in a way that this is never easy for Derek; Will doesn’t cut him off when he spends five minutes ranting about “ _Kerouac_ as the Great American Novel, really, like they’d never even _heard_ of Zora Neale Hurston”, and Derek nearly chokes on his chips when Will describes some kind of ceremony involving a Gretzky standee and a sacrificial goat made out of old socks.

He’s not surprised, exactly, but kind of delighted to find that he really likes Will. They’ve got fuck-all in common in terms of background, but Will’s sharp-tongued and matches Derek’s pace easily, and Derek thinks maybe they be friends when all this is done.

Eventually, they get to how the lie came about. As Will maneuvers off the 95 and onto Route 1, his voice drops a little and his knuckles whiten on the steering wheel. “I knew I wasn’t going to be in the wedding party, but I didn’t realize I wasn’t going to be _invited_. And we’re at this get-to-know-the-in-laws thing and someone asks me what I’m going to be doing that weekend, so I go, ‘Attending a wedding, I assume’.”

Derek wants to laugh, but it isn’t the time. Instead, he leans over and turns the volume down a few notches on the sound system.

“And Niles—that’s Lillian’s fiance’s dad, short for _Cornelius Dorian_ —looks so fucking shocked, but like he’s trying to hide it, and he says something like ‘it might be a little expensive for you’, and I know I’m saving up for top surgery but Jesus, they don’t know that, they’re just doing it to piss me off, so I say I’m sure it’ll be fine, and—”

Ahead of them, a red soccer-mom minivan runs a red light to cut them off. The truck swerves sharply, and before Derek can even react, Will’s laying on the horn and yelling, “I swear to Christ I will take your goddamn _teeth!_ ”

He actually does snort then. Will relaxes too, lets out a quick bubble of laughter. When it subsides, Derek glances back at him. “And then?”

Will’s answer comes out on a heavy sigh. “And then one of the uncles laughs and goes, ‘Bet you’d love to be a bridesmaid, right?’”

“Ah.” There’s not much else to say to that. “And you’re sure he—”

Will nods. “He definitely meant it like that.”

“Ah.”

“So I made the obvious decision, and I said something like, ‘Well, I don’t know how my boyfriend would feel about me being paired up. I can bring a plus-one, right?’”

Yeah, Derek definitely likes him.

 

“Come on,” he chides. “One selfie. One really gross, sweet selfie. You can post it on their wedding hashtag.”

They’ve been arguing about this for ten minutes now, ever since getting out of their shared room. Post-shower and shave, saying Will cleans up nicely is an understatement; he’s stunning in a pale grey suit, apparently gifted to him by a graduating senior. Derek, admittedly, isn’t doing too shabbily in his favorite pastel pink suit, even if Will seemed a little shocked when Derek offered him a tie to match.

“Dude, I don’t do selfies.” Will waves at his face. “This whole...shebang doesn’t play so well on camera.”

Derek, personally, thinks that whole shebang would work just about anywhere, but he keeps this to himself. “Who said it was about either one of us looking good?”

“Isn’t that, like, the entire point of selfies?”

“No. No, no, no, Will. You misunderstand.” Derek gestures to the people around him getting ready to take their seats. “Do you think they’re trying to look good in these photos? Fuck no. All they’re trying to look is more in love than the people actually getting married. It’s the ultimate thunder-stealer. You become the best-looking person on the hashtag, you _win the wedding_. Otherwise nobody would even bother dressing up.”

Will rolls his eyes, but he’s halfway to smiling. “I don’t think that’s how any of that works.”

“So, prove me wrong. Let’s take one. C’mon, think how mad they’ll will be when we get more likes than them.”

“Oh my god, fine,” Will relents. “How do you suggest we pose this? I know exactly one selfie angle, and it’s not pretty.”

Unfortunately, Derek knows this. He stalked Will’s Instagram for a little while, if thirty minutes counts as a little while, and while Will does have a decent eye for lighting, it doesn’t seem to apply to him. “The trick is to make it look natural. Like someone just turned and caught you with a camera.”

Will snorts a little. “I’m gonna be honest, that sounds like performative bullshit.”

“That’s the point. It’s better if you can get someone else to take it, though.” Derek scans the crowd for someone who looks like they might know their way around an iPhone, and after a second, settles on a lanky kid with Will’s flaming ginger hair. “Do you know her?”

Before Will can respond, the girl turns and sees them and before Derek can even respond, she’s sprinting over. Will catches her right as they collide, lifting her off the ground and whirling her around, and she laughs wildly before he sets her down. “Derek,” he says, grinning, “this is my little sister Maggie. She’s a pain in my ass, so you guys would probably get along.”

“Maggie, huh?” It’s all Derek can do to cover up his surprise. Somehow, it never occurred to him he’d be meeting Will’s immediate family. “Derek. Nice to meet you.” He sticks out his fist, and Maggie, after a half-second of hesitation, bumps it. She makes a little _bah-lah-lah_ motion as she pulls away, and Derek mimics it in kind.

“Hi!” She’s got a big, toothy grin that’s going to need braces in a year. “So, does my brother know you’re out of his league yet, or d’you need me to tell him?”

That in itself, both the ease with which she says _brother_ and the authenticity of her smile, says as much about her and Will’s relationship as he needs to know. He smiles back just as easily and replies, “Well, considering he’s helping me get through math this semester, I’d appreciate if you didn’t tell him quite yet.”

Maggie laughs again. She and Will have the same laugh, but hers is brighter, starts a little further up her throat than his. “Gotcha. Our secret?”

“Our secret,” Derek agrees, and flashes a questioning look at Will. _Does she know?_

 _No_ , Will mouths. For the first time since they got in the car, there’s a little bit of fear in his eyes, like maybe they won’t pull this off.

Maggie hasn’t seemed to notice any of this and is talking a mile a minute instead. “—but Will didn’t tell any of us he had a boyfriend, so Aunt Agnes threw a fit about seating charts until Siobhan calmed her down. She gets this huge vein on her forehead when she’s stressed. I thought it was going to pop. It was super weird, though, ‘cause Will wouldn’t even show us a photo of you and I asked why and he said he thought I was going to Facebook stalk you, which is dumb, because I don’t even _have_ Facebook. I’m not al _lowed_ for another year. I’d use Instagram like everybody else. So I thought you were going to be ugly or something, but you’re not. Do you like my brother?”

The last question comes at such an abrupt cutoff that for half a second, Derek doesn’t even remember to answer. “Yeah,” he says, a beat late. “Yeah, I really do.”

She regards him for a second. “You could do better. Mom says I’m gonna like boys eventually, but I don’t think so. She says—”

“Alright,” Will interrupts. “Maggie, don’t you have somewhere to be?”

“No.”

Will grimaces. Nursey, who’s dealt with his downstairs neighbors back home enough to know how to distract kids, cuts in. “Yo, Maggie. Will and I actually don’t have a lot of pictures together ‘cause he’s terrible at selfies. Would you mind taking one for us?”

She holds out her hand immediately, and Derek hands her the phone. Once she’s opened the camera, she starts barking instructions with terrifying efficiency, half drill sergeant and half Yorkie terrier. “Okay, stand back. You’re in weird lighting right now. Um, turn this way. Left. No, _my_ left, and smile. Jeez, Will—” putting the phone down for a second— “at least try to look like you’re dating each other.”

Derek laughs, but Will looks a little pained. “I’m so sorry,” he mumbles, adjusting his arms to be even stiffer than they had been. “She’s gotten worse since I went to school.”

“Don’t worry about it. Here.” Stepping behind him, Derek loops his arms around his waist and rests his chin on Will’s shoulder. “This better, Maggie?”

“ _Thank_ you, Derek. Someone understands my vision here.”

Derek adores her.

Slowly, Will relaxes and crosses his arms over Derek’s. Derek feels more than sees the smile curling across his face. A few yards away, Maggie yells, “Look in _love_ , dangit!”

In the two seconds before she takes the picture, Derek presses his face into the side of Will’s neck. “Think of it this way,” he whispers. “Either we get through this, or we die in pursuit of an open bar.”

A quick, surprised laugh. The camera flash goes off, and in that half second, Derek realizes three things.

One, that Will smells like Old Spice, which Derek usually hates, but somehow it’s really good on him;

Two, that his hand is on Derek’s elbow and pulling him a little closer, so Derek can feel it when that laugh reverbates against his chest;

And three, that this might have been the worst idea of his life.


	2. The Truth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Derek stands and holds out his other hand. “C’mon, babe, let’s dance.”
> 
> He doesn’t know what Will was expecting, but it doesn’t seem to be that. “Like, out here?”
> 
> “Like, in there, in front of real actual people.”
> 
> “You’re serious.”
> 
> Derek grins, halfway a smile and halfway a dare. “They were expecting a pride parade if you showed up, right? Let’s give them a fucking pride parade.”

The second they walk into the reception, Derek feels it.

It’s almost imperceptible, the way the room shifts. They’d managed to stay mostly unnoticed during the ceremony, but a reception’s harder to hide in, and by now most of the relatives have gotten the news that they’re here. Shoulders stiffen. Heads turn toward them for an instant and away. As the usher approaches, the conversation picks back up again, but the hairs on the back of Derek’s neck keep prickling.

“Name?”, the usher chirps.

“Poindexter. Will.” Will’s voice is flat and hard. He must’ve felt the room too, and Derek reaches out quickly to squeeze his arm. This, he knows, was Lillian’s peace offering, however small: no matter how much the relatives dislike it, Will won’t be deadnamed on the seating charts or invitations. A small gesture, maybe, but still there, and still kind.

“William,” says the usher with a small smile. It’s genuine, if customer-servicey. “And guest. Right this way.” She leads them across the mansion’s ridiculous ballroom, decked out in scarlet and and pale baby blue. There’s a little part of Derek that’s delighted that both the bouquet and he, in his pink suit, both clash horrendously with their surroundings. Finally, they stop at a table near the back.

Derek pointedly doesn’t mention that they’re not sitting with Will’s parents.

Instead, he finds himself surrounded by more distant relatives, most of whom don’t look like they belong with the yacht-club crowd or Will’s hardy ginger family. Across the table, a teen with an infected lip ring regards him with sullen interest, and to his right, an old man with a nose like a plum tomato lets out a whistling snore. His tie is trailing in his drink. Derek considers removing it for him, but the wine stains on the tie are a better look than the actual pattern. He leans over and whispers in Will’s ear, “So who are we sitting with?”

Will inclines his head toward Derek, speaking just loud enough for him to hear. “That’s my cousin Germaine across from us. Jamie for short, but right now I think she’s going by Raven. Deep into her emo phase. Cool with me, though.” He pauses. “Then again, every emo kid I knew is gay now, so that might be why.”

Raven spares him a glance a little softer than the withering look she’d been giving her salad fork. When Will smiles back, she jerks her head toward the sleeping man and pulls a face that’s an extraordinary rendition of his drooling one. “Hey, asshole. I lipread, remember?”

She taps a hearing aid in among the studs on her ear. Will lets out something approximating an apology, and she shakes her head. “Nah, it’s cool. Just don’t mention that to my mom, yeah? Don’t need her finding out about my gal pal just yet.”

“Hey,” says Derek, giving a half-wave. “Derek. The boyfriend. Aquarius, Gryffindor, and ENFP, if that helps.”

He thinks the twitch of her mouth is the closest to a smile he’s going to get from her. “Nice of you to show out for Will.”

“Least I could do.”

She nods again and reaches into her purse to pull out a battered copy of a Terry Pratchett novel. Derek waits a minute more for a response, but she seems to be done with him, so he turns back to Will and gestures to the old man. “Who’s he?”

“That would be one of Niles’s more distant relatives. They don’t really talk to him, but he’s loaded. Apparently, he once straight up decked Warren Buffett over a poker game.”

“Impressive.”

“I guess. He doesn’t do much of anything now but sleep. He…” Will trails off, and his expression dims a degree as he takes in the other people around them. “Oh, Christ.”

Derek frowns. “What?”

“Oh, Christ,” Will mumbles again, putting his head in his hands. “They put us at the reject table. It’s where they send the relatives they didn’t want to invite.” He looks across the table at a tiny old woman in an elaborately flowered hat. “Hi, Aunt Minnie.”

“Hello, dear,” she warbles. “How’s school?”

“School is good. This is my, um, boyfriend. Derek, meet my great-aunt Minnie.”

Great-Aunt Minnie smiles brightly at Derek over her sherry. “It’s so nice to see you kids finding love,” she announces. “My goodness, I miss my wild days.”

“Really?” asks Derek, ignoring Will’s frantic head-shaking to his left.

“Oh, yes, dear. I was quite the adventuress back in the day. When I was your age, my boyfriend concussed me from bending me over a desk.” She glances at Will. “Your uncle Robert was a creative lover, dear.”

Derek decides he quite likes the reject table.

The meal goes by mostly uneventfully, impressively bland chicken and not enough wine. At one point, Maggie runs over to say hi to Raven, and the two have a quick, hushed discussion that mainly consists of gesturing at Derek and giggling. The most interesting part by far, though, is Will. Now that they’ve faced down the first introductions, he seems possessed by the sudden need to prove to everyone in the room that yes, he does in fact have a boyfriend. Derek is all too happy to follow his lead.

He really does have no idea how it happens, but barely thirty minutes into the reception, he’s hip-to-hip with Will, who’s playing with his fingertips and smiling softly as they recount the entirely fake story of how they met. The cousin they’re talking to is young enough to be happy for them, and from the look on her face, she’s enchanted. “So I walk into my tutoring appointment and I’m thinking, like, okay, English major taking his math requirement, just gotta get this guy through finals and get paid, and of _course_ it’s the guy I spent all of Intro Mythology staring at.”

Derek can’t help the way his cheeks burn when Will looks at him. He presses his lips together and replies, “Took you long enough to ask me out, though.”

Will grins. “How was I supposed to know that Derek Nurse, top ten in Samwell’s Most Beautiful two years running, was into me?”

“You are _so_ dumb,” Derek replies, and leans over to peck Will on the cheek.

There’s a half second, not unlike Shitty’s pause on the phone, where Will freezes just as Derek kisses him. Not enough that you’d know to look for it, because Will relaxes and squeezes Derek’s hand, but one you might see if you were.

“So have you met the sisters yet?” One of the endless number of uncles wants to know, a big blustery man who gestures with his drink when he talks. “Can’t miss ‘em.” He inclines his glass toward two girls in yellow dresses near the edge of the room. One of them is Maggie, and the other has Will’s unmistakable hair and freckles. “Maggie and Maisie. Maggie’s eleven, Maisie’s six. M names, the whole family.”

Will’s fingers are suddenly stiff in Derek’s. He doesn’t look up from the table. It doesn’t go over Derek’s head that Will isn’t an M name, or that the uncle is starting to lean a little too heavily toward them. He squeezes Will’s hand once, a message. _Is this the guy?_

A nod, almost imperceptible, in return. _Yeah._

“I’ve met Maggie, sir,” he replies. “She’s a very nice girl.”

“Bright, definitely.” The uncle swirls his whiskey. He won’t make eye contact with Derek, instead choosing to stare at Will while he talks. “She’ll make her parents proud, sure. They got _that_ one right.”

The extra emphasis on _that_ is definitely bait. Beside him, Will’s shoulders are beginning to rise, and the hand that isn’t holding Derek’s is twisted tightly in the tablecloth.

The uncle smiles. It doesn’t reach his eyes. “Pity, that family. They always wanted a son.”

In his mind, Derek gets up and decks the guy so hard in the jaw that he’s knocked out of his chair. He can almost feel the way teeth would loosen beneath his fingers as he followed through with all his weight. Derek isn’t usually a violent person by nature—the only time he’s ever fought off the ice was at Andover, and he’s not risking cops again—but there’s something about this guy that makes his teeth grind.

But he can’t do that here. Will needs him. Besides, Derek knows this game all too well, and it’s one he’s only ever played to win.

Instead, he smiles his best, brightest smile, and presses a quick kiss to Will’s hand. “Well, then,” he replies, voice lethally polite, “lucky them for getting such a good one.”

The uncle stares at him for one dangerous second longer, and then harrumphs, turning back to his whiskey. A large drop of it catches on his aggressively bristly moustache and drips onto the tablecloth. Derek realizes with a twinge in his stomach that the table has gone absolutely silent around them. None of the rest of the relatives seem to want to look at him, let alone engage.

Without warning, Will stands up so quickly he nearly knocks his wineglass over. “I think,” he announces a little too loudly, “I’m going to find the bathroom.” His hand brushes over Derek’s shoulder in a perfunctory thanks, and then he’s gone.

Derek follows without a second thought.

 

He finds Will slumped against the side of the building. He’s crying, quiet, shaking sobs that rack his entire body. Derek sits gingerly beside him and says nothing.

“I’m fine,” says Will.

“I know.”

“I’m _fine_ ,” says Will again, like he’s trying to convince himself. His voice is past breaking, already broken, and Derek would love to say he doesn’t get it, to pat Will on the shoulder and listen for a minute and go back inside, make nice with the relatives. 

But he does get it. He knows that tone. That’s Shitty, curled over with his head in his hands after his dad called him on his eighteenth birthday to ask him why he wasn’t going to Yale. That’s the catch in Lardo’s voice when she jokes about her family’s opinions on her art. That’s Derek, sitting alone in the hallway on parents’ weekend for the third year in a row and waiting to see if his moms texted back this time.

That’s the moment when you realize that they’re never going to love you like you need them to, and there’s nothing you can do to change it.

“I’m sorry,” Will says then, and Derek looks up at him, but Will doesn’t look back. His eyes are squeezed tightly shut. He’s chewing on a thumbnail, and for the first time, Derek realizes Will’s nails are bitten down beyond the quick. “I didn’t—it wasn’t supposed to be this bad. I didn’t want even really want to be here, it was just their stupid money and their stupid faces when they said I couldn’t.” 

The nail tears. Blood blooms Will’s finger. He shakes his hand and curses quietly, and before Derek can think twice, he grabs Will’s hand, squeezing it hard. After a second, it stops shaking. 

“I know,” he says quietly. It isn’t enough. He swallows. “After I came out, my moms brought me to this art opening in SoHo. And everyone was all nice about it, and they were all trying to prove they knew everything about it, like _oh, Derek, I heard you’ve come to a decision recently, you know my daughter’s cousin’s friend has been doing a thesis on the constraints of gender recently, I’m glad to know you’ve been feeling so goddam_ free _with your identity_ , like they knew anything about it and they—”

He cuts himself off. The hand that hasn’t been holding Will’s is scratching unconsciously at the ground, and his fingernails are caked in dust. Whatever they’re doing here, it’s territory Derek still edges around, even with well-meaning friends. But Will needs this right now. _Derek_ needs this right now.

“And none of them would look me in the eye,” he finishes. “Not like they had before.”

Will’s voice, when he speaks, is quiet but very clear. “My mom won’t touch me anymore.” He doesn’t look at Derek. “Or my dad. Maggie, she’s pretty cool about it, and Maisie’s too young to get anything that’s going on, but. Yeah.”

“Yeah.”

A long, vacant pause. Derek thinks vaguely of the white noise machines in his therapist’s waiting room. With his free hand, Will rubs at the corners of his eyes. “Your moms, they took it well?”

“We had—” a quick, unintentional laugh— “five minutes of ‘no, I’m not a boy’, and then another twenty minutes of ‘no, I don’t want HRT, I’m not a girl’, and Ammi minored in linguistics, so after that it was less of a coming out and more of a discussion of the gendered etymology of the word ‘they’ until I told them I still went by he, and then Mama opened a bottle of wine to celebrate how progressive they were both being.”

Ducking his head, Will laughs too, just enough that it’s encouraging. “So is that the New York version of the classic Maine ‘nod and repress’?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

The edges of a smile play on Will’s lips. “My mom asked me, word for word, if it was because we read Twelfth Night in English.”

“Wait, really?” Now Derek’s smiling too, just the ghost of one. “Because of Viola?”

“Yeah! No joke, they called the school and tried to get it taken off the curriculum. It was _mortifying_. I think my teacher was actually scared of me for a bit.”

For half a second, the smile slips, and Derek can’t let that happen. “Ammi,” he begins, and his voice threatens to break in either tears or laughter, “left a book outside my door about the history of sexual fluidity and told everyone about it at their next dinner party.”

They really lose it then. Of course, absolutely nothing about the situation is actually funny, but it’s so much easier to laugh than anything else, so before Derek knows it, they’re both doubled over and laughing so hard it aches. “That,” Will gasps, “is so fantastically fucked up.”

“But it’s funny.”

“It is, isn’t it?” 

And isn’t it funny, too, he thinks wildly, how he even likes Will like this, with dirt under his fingernails and snot on his jacket sleeve, fucked up and funny and hardly even painful. How easy it would be, if he wanted, to reach out to Will, wipe the tears off his cheeks and straighten his collar. Easy to press his lips to Will’s neck and breathe him in and let all the sadness drift out of their lungs and dissolve into stars.

He doesn’t think that’s how stars work, but that’s beside the point.

Will’s breathing slowly evens out. “Do you wanna go back in?”

“ _No_ ,” Derek replies, and the vehemence in his voice surprises even him. “I don’t. At all. I spent all my fucking formative years with these people, and they made my life hell.” He chews his lip, thinking of the times in high school he came back to his dorm to find all his clothes thrown out on the roof. “I don’t _want_ to be anywhere near them.”

Will squeezes his hand. “Do you want to go?”

Weirdly, that idea hadn’t actually occurred to Derek. It’d take them ten minutes to get their stuff, another ten to get the car from the valet. They could be back at Samwell before midnight. He takes a strained breath in, and then a longer one out. “No.”

“No?”

“No. I think…” He stares at their clasped hands. The edges of Will's nail are feathered brown-red with drying blood. “I think I need to be here. I don’t know about you, but I think if I can piss them off this once, it could be really cathartic.”

Will stays silent then for so long that Derek wonders if he was even listening. Finally, he says, “That’d be pretty satisfying, wouldn’t it?”

“What would?”

“Pissing them off. Showing them they don’t own what we do. That we’re here.”

“And queer, and they better get used to it?”

“Exactly.”

From an open window down the wall, Derek can hear the strains of a waltz. Cornelius’s family—the Carmichaels, apparently—shelled out for a full band, and the music seems to rise and fall with the soft breeze around them. Before he can really think better of it, he blurts, “Do you wanna do it right now?”

“ _Yes_ ,” Will replies vehemently.

He stands and holds out his other hand. “C’mon, babe, let’s dance.”

He doesn’t know what Will was expecting, but it doesn’t seem to be that. “Like, out here?”

“No, dumbass.” He digs in his pocket and pulls out a handkerchief, silently thanking his moms for training him into carrying one. Will takes it and blows his nose. “Like, in there, in front of real actual people.”

“You’re serious.”

Derek grins, halfway a smile and halfway a dare. “They were expecting a pride parade if you showed up, right? Let’s give them a fucking pride parade.”

He drops Will’s hand and straightens his jacket instead, letting his hands linger slightly on the dove-grey lapels. Will leans into the touch. Derek can almost swear he shivers. “You’ll be there with me?”

“Always,” Derek replies, and he thinks he might mean it.

 

It isn’t until they’re actually on the dancefloor that Derek realizes exactly how badly he’s fucked up. Even with only a couple drinks in his system, he feels intoxicated as Will puts one hand on his hip. A few older relatives whisper at the tables, and Cornelius Dorian looks openly scandalized. Derek leans close to Will’s ear and whispers, “So, do you think they’re more terrified by the pink suit or the seven piercings?”

“You have seven?” He sees Will glance at the rings in his ears and eyebrow, counting. “I only see five.”

He shrugs lightly. “You can’t see all of them.”

Will’s pupils dilate like someone flicked a switch. Sliding one hand to the small of Derek’s back to pull him a little closer, he grins. “Little of both, then. And I’ve got the matching tie—they’ll think you’re corrupting me.”

“Should’ve given you a flower crown.”

He makes a face. “I think Cornelius Dorian would burst a blood vessel.”

They’re still just standing, swaying a little to the music, when Derek gets another, equally bad idea. He’s been doing really well with those lately. “Hey, Will, didn’t you say you can dance?”

Will looks at him like he’s an idiot. “Derek, we’re dancing.”

Derek shakes his head. “You know that’s not what I mean, asshole. Like, you can actually dance?” When Will still looks confused, Derek rephrases. “Have you ever waltzed?”

Finally, Will seems to get what he means, because a wicked smile splits his face. “Three years of high school theater. Let’s go.”

Instead of answering, Derek steps back, launching them further onto the floor. True to his word, Will can actually dance, falling easily into the rhythm as they glide through the other couples. He seems to savor the way the room’s eyes follow them, and despite his trepidation, Derek can’t help but enjoy it too. 

Right in the middle of all of it, time seems to stop, and for one perfect, blissful, _stupid_ moment, all Derek can see is Will. There’s a high flush in his cheeks that makes his freckles look like cinnamon over starlight, a dash of gothic beauty in the air. Derek realizes with a sharp jolt that Lardo was right: there’s no way he’s getting out of this with his heart intact. 

They circle the room once, twice, and make it halfway around again before the song ends. As a final flourish, Derek spins Will out, nearly tripping over his own feet in the process, and draws him back in so they end up chest to chest again. Will is a little breathless and absolutely glowing. “Think it’s working?”

There it is: a reminder that no matter how much he’d like it to be, this isn’t real. Derek forces a laugh, glancing around the room. “Oh, definitely.” He lets go of Will’s hand to poke him in the ribs, and Will lets out a thoroughly unattractive and very cute squeak. “So, high school theater?”

Will rolls his eyes. “We’re never mentioning that again.”

“Oh, we’re _definitely_ mentioning that again. Tell me you were the kind that burst into song in the cafeteria.”

“No, I definitely wasn’t, and I won’t stand for this slander in my own house.”

“This isn’t even your house.”

Will snickers. It is, unfortunately, adorable. Derek looks at him and thinks how ridiculous it is that he’s so wrapped up in a boy he’s barely known for a few days, and how well and truly screwed he is when this is over.

Taking his hand again, Will skims his thumb across Derek’s hip. Derek’s brain glitches a he speaks. “You know,” he says casually, “we could freak them out even more.”

“I think a striptease would be taking it a little far.” His tone is as casual as he can make it, but he's just a little breathless as Will’s fingers slip under his jacket.

Will’s eyes are wide and dark, barely inches away. He whispers, “Do you trust me?”

“Yes,” Derek says, no hesitation.

Another smile. “Tell me if this is okay.”

Derek opens his mouth to ask what, but before he can, Will is kissing him so softly his heart aches. Without thinking, he lets go of Will’s hand, hardly noticing when it drops to his waist, and cradles Will’s jaw, tracing the fine lines of his cheekbones. Will’s lips are so warm, and when Derek exhales a little into his mouth, his tongue traces Derek’s lower lip. A few tables away, someone chokes.

He pulls away. Will’s eyebrows shoot up, and he starts to babble. “Oh, Christ, I am so sorry. That was over the line. We can just forget that happened, if you want—”

“No, it’s good.” Derek cuts him off.

This time, they’re a little more urgent, his teeth scraping Will’s lower lip as Will’s arms wind all the way around his waist. Something burns hot in the pit of his stomach. Will shifts to kiss the corner of his mouth, then his jaw. His lips brush Derek’s earlobe. Derek shivers.

They’re kissing again and god, he _really_ needs to clarify whether this is real because it’s starting to go a little far. In a moment of absolute risk, he mumbles against Will’s lips, “We should maybe talk about this”

“Probably.”

Derek pulls back just a little, relishing in the way Will’s lips chase his. “We could, uh, do that.”

He feels more than sees Will’s eyebrows raise, his mouth pull into a smirk. “Is that really how you’re going to start this?”

“Is it working?” For good measure, Derek leans in to catch his mouth again, biting lightly at his lower lip and breathing in every desperate little noise Will makes. An older woman a few feet away makes a disapproving _harumph_. Derek jerks his head in the direction of the back staircase. “It’s quieter over there. C’mon.”

The three glasses of wine roil in Derek’s stomach as he leads Will across the dancefloor. Just before they get to the door, manicured fingers dig into his arm. One of Cornelius’s relatives they spoke to earlier (Cassie? Karen?) grips his bicep like a steel trap.

“Hi, Carol,” WIll half-grimaces.

Carol, apparently, hiccups into her gin and tonic. Her face is uncomfortably close to Derek’s. “I just wanted to tell you,” she manages, pointing a shaky finger, “that you two”—hiccup—“are so brave for coming here, and being yourselves, and being out here, and I am so inspired by your actions today, and I am _so okay_ with you two being here together.”

It’s so strange that Derek isn’t sure whether to laugh or stare at her. He settles for a little of both, but before he can say something stupid, Will pries Carol’s hand off his arm. “Thanks, Carol. That means a lot. You know, I think I heard Dirk over there talking about health care earlier. Do you want to go see him?”

She spins tipsily and points at a guy across the room to a crowd of blonde men. He isn’t entirely sure which one is Dirk, but they all look like the villain in a movie where the protagonist is a golden retriever. “That man and I—” hiccup—”need to have some words.”

As Carol wavers away, Will glances at Derek, an apology in his eyes. Derek cuts him off, leaning in to whisper, “And I would have voted for Obama for a _third_ term if I could have, Derek.”

Will snorts so loudly that Carol almost turns around, but she stays on her almost-steady course towards the blonde men in the corner. “Out of curiosity,” Derek continues, “which one is Dirk?”

“Oh, he doesn’t exist,” Will replies lightly. “I just thought it sounded like someone who might be here.”

In the half second it takes Will to pull him out into the hallway, Derek’s heart feels soft, fragile, and, just for a second, completely full.

 

 

He really means to talk to Will once they left the reception, but the second they step into the hallway, Will tugs him toward the stairs. At that moment, Derek would followed him anywhere at all, be it hell or Manhattan on Thanksgiving Day, which he kind of considers the same thing. So he follows, barely saying a word in case he breaks this magic thing between them, as Will pulls him through the dusty old hallways of the house, past dusty statues and moonlit alcoves and into this room. Their room.

He can feel it coming in his toes, in the anticipation curling in his stomach, what’s about to happen. And he wants to be here with Will. Wants to touch him again, wants to take him apart slowly and see what makes that tightly coiled spring Will seems to live in work.

But he can’t explain the drop in his stomach when Will turns to face him, closing the door with a click that resounds in the moonlit room. Will isn’t moving, and they aren’t talking about it.

It hits him then what’s actually happening. This is Derek’s usual pattern: they’ll hook up, fall asleep, and explain it away the next morning. They’ll be friendly after, but not friends. It’s what he does whenever he really starts to get close to someone, because if there’s one thing that really keeps people at arm’s length, it’s the day after a one-night stand. He’s got a healthy sex drive and an anxiety disorder. This is just the natural consequence.

See, if there’s one thing Derek knows about himself, it’s that he breaks things. Phone screens, regularly. Mugs, a little less so. Once, in a particularly legendary incident at the shop, three vases and his big toe falling up a set of stairs. He does the same thing emotionally, according to his therapist, and as much as he hates to admit it, she might be right. It’s so much easier to ruin things before they can get ruined for you.

He just really didn’t want to ruin this, that’s all.

Derek stares at the floor, then his hands. He can’t let himself talk for fear of what he might say. Will leans against the door. The moon plays a soft sonata on the carpet. “Derek?”

He looks. _Stupid_. Will is staring, one of his hands halfway out. “Derek,” he says again, softer now.

“Yeah.” A statement. Not an answer. He’s waiting for Will to make the first move, because everything will be easier after that. 

Fuck. Derek _likes_ hookups, always has. He likes losing himself in the feeling of another person, wants maybe more than anything for Will to kiss him again so Derek can quiet his brain. He can’t ever remember this kind of hesitation. But Will feels different. Derek feels different around him. He’s not sure he wants that separation tomorrow.

“Derek, will you just look at me?” Now his voice is breaking again. It hurts—fuck, it hurts, that wanting note in Will’s voice.

He isn’t sure exactly what his face looks like at the moment, but he rearranges it into an easy grin and fixes his eyes just to Will’s left. “Yeah?”

“What do you want?”

The question catches him almost off-guard. Instead of letting it show, Derek licks his lips and watches Will’s eyes dart to his mouth. “I think… right now, I want whatever you want.”

“That’s not an answer.” Will takes a step closer. Suddenly, the moonlight from the window splashes across his face, throwing his features into stark relief. Derek touched that face, curled his fingers into that impossibly red hair, now turned cool by the light. He realizes, suddenly, that he might not get the chance to do that again, and the thought makes his breath catch.

Neither of them mentions that they haven’t turned the light on.

“You’re right.” Depersonalized flirting, that’s easy. He’ll make Will laugh, and they’ll be right back where they were, and Derek can forget the feelings clogging his throat. “I’m not a mind reader. Why don’t you tell me what you want, and I’ll see what I can do about it?”

“I—” Will starts to move toward him again, faster this time, but he goes straight past Derek and sits down hard on the bed. He’s chewing on his nail again. Derek wonders distractedly if it’ll start bleeding. Automatically, his hand goes to his pocket to grab his handkerchief, but he freezes with it halfway out when Will says, “I don’t want to sleep with you right now, okay?”

This time, Derek can’t hide the way whatever’s on his face. He doesn’t sit down so much as the bed seems to kick his legs out from under him. Will must notice, because his hand goes out toward Derek (pity, probably), and he immediately starts to equivocate. “Fuck, wait, like, I didn’t mean it like that. Derek, hold on, don’t—”

“It’s alright.” Derek tries to muster something like a shrug. “This never happened, yeah? No big deal.” He smiles brightly and hopes his face doesn’t break in two. Disconnect from the situation. Go somewhere else. All that stuff his therapist keeps telling him not to do. “In that case, we should get downstairs.”

Will’s words float by him like large, colorful moths in a tunnel. “Oh, my god,” Will is saying. He sounds halfway to pissed off. “How can you be so smart and so, so dumb?”

Derek snaps back to reality. “What?”

“Like, we go to the same school, right?”

“No, no. What are you talking about?”

“I said not right now, not not ever.”

And the penny drops. “Wait, have you been flirting with me?”

“Yeah, since we _met_.”

Derek’s head is spinning. He doesn’t know how to process anything that’s happening. His brain shuffles wildly, filing images—Will’s full-face smile back at the florist’s, the way he’d pulled Derek closer for the photo, his face when they were dancing downstairs—into place. A pattern. Come to think of it, a very clear one. “You never said.”

“Look.” Will props himself up on his elbows. All the irritation drains out of his voice, and he only sounds tired now. “I know we’re in a pretty fucked up situation right now. A very fucked up situation. Actually, like, I don’t even think there are worse circumstances for us to be in right now.”

“That’s not wrong,” Derek concedes.

He presses his lips together quickly and swallows. His face is the most open Derek’s ever seen it. “But I like you. And I wasn’t going to bring it up while we were here until what just happened. Look, I’m really not into hookups on the first date, but if you wanted to go on, you know, a real one without my family here, I’d like that. A lot.”

“A date.” He’s starting to feel like the backing vocals in a bad call-and-response song.

For the first time, Will actually looks nervous. He goes to bite his thumbnail again, seems to think better of it, and sits on his hands, his voice suddenly small. “Yeah. Unless, oh God, you don’t want that, in which case this never happened and I’m so sorry for putting you on the spot like this.”

Derek interrupts. “And what if I do? Want that, I mean?”

Will raises his head and looks right at him. In the dark, his eyes are huge, one shade off from gold, and they search Derek’s face as his tongue darts across his lower lip. On the covers between them, Will’s hand moves by degrees until the tips of his fingers are barely touching Derek’s. “In that case, we drive back home.”

“Yeah.” Just as slowly, Derek takes Will’s hand, hearing a sharp intake of breath as he does.

“You and I go for dinner.” Derek’s heart leaps a little as Will amends, “Well, we get pizza or I’ll make something, cause I’m a little short right now, and then, you know, we see where this goes.”

Derek grins. “You can cook?”

Will raises one eyebrow. “You can’t? This another one of those city gay things?”

“Fuck you,” Derek’s other hand is on Will’s face now, pulling him closer.

“I just told you, not on the first date.”

And Derek really means to stop kissing him so they can keep talking, but Will exhales into his mouth and suddenly, the knot of anxiety in his stomach finally starts to dissolve. Will laughs as Derek tugs playfully on his pink tie, and it’s the best sound he’s ever heard. “I like that idea,” he gets out, “but you left something out.”

“Which is?”

He wrenches himself away from Will, rolling to the edge of the bed to pick up the phone. “Well, way I see it, we have a fancy hotel room on Cornelius Dorian’s dime, and they do room service. Feel like late night ice cream?”

The way Will is stretched back on the bed, arms behind his head and shirt halfway untucked, makes him look like a Victorian dandy from a classic novel. If Derek were a painter, Will would be his only subject. “I’d like nothing better.”

 

When they leave the next morning, Maggie ambushes him on the way to the car. Out of her fancy dress, she dresses a lot like Will, with all that ridiculous hair scraped back into a messy ponytail. She rocks back and forth lightly on her feet before launching in. “Do you really like my brother?”

“You asked me that yesterday,” he points out.

Maggie shoves her hands deep in her pockets. “Yeah, but things change. I didn’t used to like him but now I do, and my parents liked him and now they don’t so much. So do you?”

She’s such a smart kid, and it breaks Derek’s heart that she knows how her parents feel about Will. He wishes he could do more, but the best he can offer her is a quick ruffle of her hair and a soft, “Yeah, I really like your brother, and for the foreseeable future, I will.”

Maggie regards him for a second longer. Then she throws her arms around his waist, squeezes tight, and sprints back toward her family’s car. “Coming, Ma!”

From behind him, Will asks, “Good to go?”

Derek gives Maggie one more glance. When her mother isn’t looking, she leans out the car window and waves wildly at them. He smiles. “Yeah, let’s.”

The drive back to Massachusetts the next day seems much shorter and infinitely longer than the drive up. Whatever time isn’t spent with Will’s fingers playing on the back of his neck, he’s itching with anticipation and counting the exits until they pull up outside the hockey team’s frat house. Will pulls the truck deftly into the driveway and idles it. “So, I can get the bags, and then if you want, we can get food?”

Before Derek can answer, the door to the house bangs open and Shitty catapults himself out. “William motherfucking Poindexter! You wanna tell me how your date weekend went? I was promised _deets _, and you will deliver!”__

__He skids to a halt outside the truck. “Oh, hey, Nursey.”_ _

__Derek starts to say “Hey, Shits,” but Shitty does a double take back to him. “Oh, fuck, Nursey! If you’re here—” pointing to Derek— “and you’re here—” pointing to Will— “who’s driving the oblivious bus?”_ _

__Will flips him off. Shitty grins. “Successful weekend?”_ _

__A second of silence. Will ducks his head, blushing. “Yeah,” Derek says, and reaches over to tuck Will’s hair behind his ear. “You could say that.”_ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WOW
> 
> that dance scene has literally been in my nurseydex document archive for... a year? maybe more? i don't know what i'm going to do now that it's done. jesus fuck. i've lost my purpose in life.
> 
> okay, beside the point. ON TO THE NOTES.
> 
> first and foremost, sex can be a really unhealthy coping mechanism, and if you're in a bad place with that, please seek help. [here's a link to start out with.](https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/therapists)
> 
> ANYWAY
> 
> 1\. still dedicated to [Acai](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Acai), who's wonderful.
> 
> 2\. as stated previously, this chapter has some more honest depictions of gender and identity, as well as some graphic depiction of new england. i've added some warnings, but if there need to be more, please let me know in the comments.
> 
> 2a. again, i can promise at least 2 of these people are based on real life, and i will give a reward to the people who can guess who.
> 
> 3\. sometimes you just need your favorite characters waltzing in suits, okay?
> 
> 4\. nothing i write is ever not dedicated to kim.
> 
> 5\. is nursey dumb? or is he just an oblivious gay like the rest of us? it's up to you.
> 
> anyway. thanks for coming with me on this journey! if you want to come chat, i'm on tumblr. here's my [main](https://playing-for-keeps.tumblr.com) or [check please sideblog](https://mainehoe.tumblr.com)!

**Author's Note:**

> hahahahahahahahaha can't keep putting off posting forever SO SOME THINGS
> 
> 1\. This is very much a thank you to [Acai](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Acai), who did a podfic of _turns me to gold_ , which is maybe the nicest thing anyone's ever done for me!! Cannot recommend their work enough.
> 
> 2\. It will have a chapter two, but I'm posting this as a) procrastination and b) to make sure I actually finish chapter 2. It'll be cute. There'll be kissing and shit. There'll also be some franker discussion of gender & identity, fair warning.
> 
> 3\. A lot of characters in chapter 2 draw from real life, because I know people like this. I promise you, every time you hear something very New Englandy and think "that can't possibly be realistic", it's real.
> 
> 3a. My neighbor has a chicken coop shaped like a tiny version of her house. You have no idea.
> 
> 4\. Title from "The Next Time We Wed" by the Fratellis ( _be my myth, I'll be your sin, save me at your own expense_ , which fits a little too well).
> 
> 5\. Also dedicated to Kim. Always dedicated to Kim.
> 
> 6\. I see a lot of different interpretations of drug use in fanon, but I wanna tell you that a couple lines from Nursey and Lardo actually happened. Points to whoever guesses which ones.
> 
> 7\. Author grudge against Kerouac still going strong. FUCK Kerouac.
> 
> Feel free to talk to me on tumblr! My [main blog](https://playing-for-keeps.tumblr.com) and [check please sideblog](https://mainehoe.tumblr.com).


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